Gang way! Compsci geeks coming through! AI engine can finger fakes on social networks

A group of computer scientists have developed a machine-learning algorithm that can sniff out fake profiles lurking on social networks.

It’s likely that you and your Facebook friends have the same mutual friends. And on Twitter, it’s also probable that your followers also follow the same people you do too due to common interests.

These associations in social networks can be modeled on a graph as edges, where users are the vertices or nodes. The researchers from the Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, Israel, and the University of Washington, United States, hunted for fake social media accounts by developing an unsupervised learning algorithm that measures the probability of an edge existing between vertices.

A vertex – or account – with lots of edges with low probabilities is a sign that it was probably fake, they explained in a paper published in the journal Social Network Analysis and Mining this month.

Bogus profiles are usually run by bots that automatically spam out links to dodgy websites, spread misinformation, bump up the number of followers someone has, or hurl abuse around.

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2018/04/17/ai_can_expose_fake_bots_on_social_media/